


Burn Out

by evilblubber



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Anakin is Done, Angst, Feelings, Fluff, Hux is emotionally constipated, Kylo Ren would be a Grandmomma's boy, Kylo dies, M/M, Mention Of Genocide, Murder, Obi-Wan is More Done, That's it, hux is upset, in a cameo, sort of, the Prequels Trio show up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 17:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7061872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilblubber/pseuds/evilblubber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendol Hux the Second watches the love of his life die at thirty-five years old.</p>
<p>This is, however, a concept that will not occur to him only much, much later. It is only years after Kylo Ren is dead and gone that he will dare think of him as <em>the love of his life.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Out

**Author's Note:**

> This entire story is just Kylo dying, Hux being upset and (at the end) Hux making everyone as upset as he is (and as dead as Kylo.)
> 
> Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme make a very VERY small cameo. 
> 
> IF I AM MISERABLE, YOU SHOULD BE, TOO.

Brendol Hux the Second watches the love of his life die at thirty-five years old.

This is, however, a concept that will not occur to him only much, much later. It is only years after Kylo Ren is dead and gone that he will dare think of him as _the love of his life._

 

(Because Hux was not supposed to fall in love with the wild, uncontrolled person. This ungainly, terrible man who snored too loud and couldn’t hold his liquor and snotted when he cried and kissed every freckle on Hux’s skin and broke everything around him and caused s _o many fucking budget deficits_ and danced with Hux in an empty room to no music and made stupid stories about imagined shapes in the stars and talked to droids and laughed as he broke bones and couldn’t hold a goddamn conversation without making it weird and his ridiculous nose and his eyes like the void and and and and—)

 

Kylo Ren is lying in the snow. He looks beautiful even now—he will remember that later. He lies spread out, arms stretched as though he is simply lounging there, though the image is jarred by the pained twist on his face. There are spatters of red on his skin, there is more pooling beneath them. There is a river of blood further away, a pile of corpses being buried under the snow.

Kylo Ren never did anything by halves. It had taken a veritable army of Rebels to knock him down.

His ribs are broken, his leg is twisted at an unnatural angle, and there is a blaster wound pummeled into his _chest_. Hux is trying to fix it with a bacta patch he’d scavenged off a crashed pod, and prayed (to whome? What god would answer him?) that Phasma would get here with that fucking medical team.

Kylo needs to stop bleeding out in the snow, thinks Hux, as he tries to figure out how best to fix Ren’s leg. No, no, his chest is priority—

“Bren,” rasps Kylo, eyes fluttering open. There are snowflakes caught in his lashes. “Bren—”

 

 

(The first time Hux had seen Kylo Ren’s eyes, he’d wanted to claw them out.

Because the utter imbecile that stalked his ship like he owned it, this uncontrolled beast who appeared to enjoy nothing more than _casually pissing on his authority_ had no right to look like _that._

It was as though someone had punched him in the gut. Those eyes were like the fathomless spaces between stars.

He wanted them gone from his sight. _He wanted them_.)

 

 

“Don’t talk, you idiot!” Hux snaps. “Save your strength. And how are you even conscious?”

_The Force, s_ ays the warm voice in his head. _And I don’ wanna  sleep—_

Hux roll his eyes violently, and growls, “Save your strength.”

_Oh, Bren,_ says Kylo, and even his mental voice is vague and hazy. _I’m gunna die._

Something very cold settles in his heart, runs through his veins and chills him to the bone. He looks at Kylo, with his wide eyes and a smile twisting his face through the pain. “No,” he says, slowly, “no, you are not. I won’t let you.”

_‘Kay._

He goes silent for a few moments, and Hux is aware that his shoulder is on fire and his body aches and he is cold but for the humming presence in the back of his mind and the warmth from Kylo, who is an actual furnace. But even Kylo Ren is growing colder by the second and this makes the chill in Hux’s chest worse.

_You’re so bright,_ Kylo says, in that terribly weak mental voice. Hus looks at him again, at his goddamn face and that smile pulling on bloody and cracked lips. _Fuck, Hux—you’re so bright. You’ve always been—_ the link stutters, and so does Hux’s heart— _so bright. Don’t burn out. Please, don’t—_

“I won’t,” says Hux, and he pretends that it isn’t a promise, “I won’t.  


 

 

(“You are—bright,” Kylo said once, before Hux’s entire world fell apart.

Hux looked up from a datapad with an unimpressed look. “And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s the only way I can describe your mind,” Kylo said, shrugging one ridiculously broad shoulder. He’s sprawled over Hux’s bed, where he sleeps more often than not, with the air of one who owns the place. “It’s, ah, bright—like a star, but more compact. Focused. But, still bright enough that I can spot it miles away. Which is strange, because I never noticed it before. Now I can’t help but notice.”

Hux looks at him for a long time, and says, “Go back to sleep, you idiot.”

Kylo scowls at him and takes his revenge for the snub by lunging out and swiping the datapad from him.)

 

 

 

_Bren? Brenbrenbren you know you’re my everything, right?_ says Kylo Ren in the back of his head, low and soft and delirious with pain. _You’re my everything. Did I tell you? I’m sorry I didn’, I’m a fucking idiot._

Hux feels like he’s drowning. Hux wants him to stop. This sounds terribly like a goodbye.

“I love you too,” he rasps, and is vaguely surprised because this is news to him. “Now, please. Just—don’t die.”

_‘kay,_ Kylo hums, and grabs onto Hux’s hand, on his chest, closes his eyes.

(This is a lie. Hux knew that he loved Kylo Ren one night while they were both drunk off their asses and incapable of rational thought, the pair of them on the durasteel floor of the upper deck of the _Finalizer,_ the stars spread out before them.

They had never spoken before that. Not beyond the usual snarky insults and threatening and posturing. They had been comfortable enemies, up until Kylo _fucking_ Ren showed up at his office and demanded that he drink with him, glaring down his overlarge nose.

Hux told himself that he did not do this because he _liked_ the insufferable bastard or anything ridiculous like that, but because he didn’t want to die at the hands of an irate pseudo-Sith.

And they ended up getting drunk on surprisingly potent alcohol and talking. A lot.

“They’re nice,” he’d said, after taking a swig from a non-regulation bottle he’d stolen from Phasma. He gestured at the stars, the clouds and multitudes of stars. “Thousands and billions of suns all living and dying an’ burning and exploding and being born. Nice.”

Hux had grabbed the bottle from him and sniped, “Never took you for a poet, Ren.”

“I’m on the Dark Side,” said Kylo, looking at him in utter seriousness, thick brows furrowed, “I gotta know this poet suff so’s I can—can monologue. All the bad guys monologue.”

Hux snorts. “We aren’t the _bad guys,_ ” he says. And back then, he had believed it.

“Sure we are,” murmurs Kylo, looking out at the stars. “We’re the monsters, the dark stuff that people tell their kids about at night. But we gotta do what we gotta do.” He looks contemplative, and says, “Mom said the Dark Side was bad. But the Dark Side feels more _me,_ so I gotta be bad.”

“That…makes no sense.”

“Your face makes no sense.”

And they talked, about Hux, about Kylo, about the reproductive habits of Hutts, about youthful misadventures, and they had fallen into a friendly rapport before Hux knew it (before Hux could stop it).

“They’re like you,” Kylo said, after a long silence following a story on Hux’s behalf involving a landmine fad in the First Order Academy.

Hux blinked at him. “What?”

Kylo waved a large hand at the stars. “That. They’re like your skin-stars, but less splotchy.”

Hux stared at him in bafflement for a few seconds before covering his face and hissing, “They’re _freckles,_ not _skin-stars,_ you fucking imbecile! And stop looking at them!”

Kylo had laughed, loud and wild and bright.

And so he began sinking slowly in love.)

 

 

 

Kylo is humming. It is a slow, broken thing—disjointed because he is drifting in and out of consciousness. It is barely a tune, and it is off-key like his singing has always been, even in his head.

(Hux will hear that song in the back of his head for as long as he lives.)

It sputters to a halt, and Kylo shudders. His eyes close, and Hux hears roaring in his ears, and something in him cracks open. He abandons the bacta patch and shakes Kylo because the hand clinging to his has gone still and limp and he is cold and silent and _no no no no no no no—_

Kylo Ren does not die the way he lived—loud and bright and bloody. No, he dies the way he was in secret—quiet and soft and terribly pained.

Brendol Hux the Second watches the love of his life die at thirty-five years old.

 

* * *

 

 

_Don’t burn out,_ Kylo had said.

Hux inhales, and cups the face of the man he loved. There are tears—Hux’s tears—on his cheeks, and he looks peaceful. For once.

Hux sits there, stroking his face, until Phasma shows up.

When she does, he will pull himself together. _Don’t burn out._ He will go back to the ship, he will resume command.

He will plot.

He will kill Snoke. He will take command of the First Order. He will crush the people that did this to Kylo. He will _desecrate_ the Resistance. He will kill Organa himself.

_Don’t burn out._

He will take the galaxy. He will burn the galaxy. He will crush everything in his way.

Now, he looks up. The sky is no longer grey. He does not know how long he has been sitting here. He thinks, absently, that the stars look dimmer.

 

 

* * *

 

 

(Years from now, when the galaxy is at his feet and he has long since forgotten warmth and he has burned planets and systems and everything that stood in his way, he will stop.

He will think, _we never had any time._

He will think, _I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I tried—_

Brendol Hux the Second will die aged sixty-seven, High Emperor of the New Order and effectively the ruler of the galaxy, and incredibly lonely.

He will, however, die hearing an off-key tune in the back of his head, feeling warm hands wrapped in his _._ )

 

 

* * *

 

 

**BONUS:**

Kylo Ren attempts to murder Anakin Skywalker with his eyes, which fails primarily because they are both dead.

“ _You’ve_ gone beyond the veil!” he accuses, and is distantly glad his voice doesn’t break. “Why can’t I?”

“He’s different, Ben,” he warns. “And don’t give me that look—I know the only thing you’d cross over to see is him.” He knows him well, after yearsmonthsdayscenturiesminutes of the squabbling, accusations and arguments that took place once Kylo showed up. It turned out that he and Darth Vader do not get along—though he adores his Grandmother.

Obi-Wan(Ben) just sighs and says, “Let him go, Anakin.” He looks sharply at Kylo and says, “Let him see what he has wrought.”

He does. He sees cold rage and fire and death and destruction.

He sees Brendol effectively murdering the galaxy and enslaving the rest, and says, “I don’t see much of a difference. We were going to do all of that anyway.”

Anakin and Obi-Wan both glare at him.

“He gets that from _you_ ,” Padme accuses, from a distance.

 

(Kylo lied. He sees him go colder and colder and colder and crueler than before and wants nothing more than to hold him.

And then he does get to. Hux dies ( _kills himself_ ) and Kylo pulls him into the warmth.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hux laughs, and it is a strange, odd thing. He has not laughed in a very, very long time.
> 
> "Why?" asks Kylo, frowning at him, running a hand through his hair, "Why did you-?"
> 
> "The stars were dimmer without you," says Hux.


End file.
